smile.
“You can’t kill what I stand for.”
He had never elaborated on that statement, not even to the questioning reporters to whom most prisoners were anxious to talk. He had never appealed the convictions and had ignored parole hearings for which he was later scheduled.
He ran the prison Book, but he wouldn’t shark cigarettes or do anything else for money. The rumors were that he had killed twice more while in prison, but nobody really knew who the killer of the two unrelated victims was. They had been found in their cells, one stabbed and one burned to a crisp—there had been no evidence, no witnesses, no indictment.
15/
Wesley listened until he had heard enough, then he went looking for Carmine. He found him standing in a corner of the Yard, taking bets. Wesley waited until Carmine had finished operating and then walked over. At a silent signal, Carmine’s men stepped off to give him room.
“There’s something I want to say to you.”
Carmine just looked frozen-faced, staring through Wesley to someplace else.
“Thank you for the cigarettes. You’re a real man and I’m sorry for what I thought of you.”
Carmine’s face broke into a huge grin and he slapped Wesley heavily on the biceps. “Okay, okay, that’s good—I was right about you!”
They shook hands. And from that day on, Wesley went every place Carmine did. The first thing Wesley did was quit his job in the machine shop. Carmine had told him:
“What you wanna work in the fucking machine shop for? I’ll tell you. One, you think you’ll learn something useful for when you’re back on the bricks. This is one-hundred-percent wrong, Wes—the only thing you can make in that stinking place is a shank, and you can buy a fine one for ten packs. You think they’ll let you join the fucking union when you get out? Okay, now, number two, you think you going to impress the Parole Board, right? Wrong— you don’t want a fucking parole.”
“
“You don’t, and I’ll tell you why: what you going to do when you get out? You going to work in a gas station, push a garment rack? Gonna wash cars, kiss ass ... what?”
“I’m going to—”
“—
“Yeah,” Wesley acknowledged. “I guess that’s what I’ll be doing, all right.”
“You know why?” Carmine challenged.
Wesley smiled, but it wasn’t the icy twisting of his lips that he used on guards. He knew the old man was trying to hand out his last will and testament while he was still alive.
“Why, Pop?”
“Pop! You little punk; I could still kick
“I know you could, old man.”
And Carmine realized what Wesley had already learned, and smiled too.
“
“Is that only for white men, Carmine?”
“No. That is for
“For cops?”
“For cops, and for the kind of feeling you get on Christmas, when you know the only motherfucking way your kid’s going to get presents is if you go out and hit some citizen in the head.”
“So why don’t I want a parole?”
“Because you gonna steal, kid—and you don’t need no faggot parole officer sticking his nose into your face every time you breathe. Come out clean and then do what you have to do.”
“It’s a lot more time that way.”
“So what? People like us do nothing but time. On the street, in the joint ... it’s all the same. Either place, you can think, you can learn....”
“Like I am now?”
“Yeah, like you are now.”
16/
Another year passed—a year of Carmine sharing his income, his stash, his smokes, and his experience. Wesley paid the closest attention, especially to what seemed like the contradictions.
He saw the old man smile serenely at the shank-riddled body of what had been a human being carried from the cell block to the prison morgue. “Now that’s a
But when Carmine told Wesley that his mother must have been Italian because Wesley for sure had some
